Ah, hell. I was going to break out the Cooley rankings to show how Harvard and NYU were 1,2 respectively.

But then I saw the new Cooley rankings.

1. Boalt2. Columbia3. U of Minnesota4. Harvard5. NYU6. University of Iowa7. University of Texas8. Ohio State University9. University of Michigan10. Southern University11. University of California Hastings12. Georgetown University13. Northwestern University14. Yale University15. University of Illinois16. University of Virginia17. University of Washington18. University of Florida19. University of New Mexico20. Louisiana State University

What a ridiculous list. NYU over Yale, I could see. Chicago, Duke, Penn, Stanford unranked, I can deal with. But Columbia over NYU?!!? Blasphemy!

Wait a minute ... Cooley doesn't make their own top 20? That's embarrassing. I'd like to think that if I were designing a rankings system to make myself look better, I would at least show up somewhere near the top. (Also, I love that Yale isn't in the top 20. There's some truth to that....)

Ah, hell. I was going to break out the Cooley rankings to show how Harvard and NYU were 1,2 respectively.

But then I saw the new Cooley rankings.

1. Boalt2. Columbia3. U of Minnesota4. Harvard5. NYU6. University of Iowa7. University of Texas8. Ohio State University9. University of Michigan10. Southern University11. University of California Hastings12. Georgetown University13. Northwestern University14. Yale University15. University of Illinois16. University of Virginia17. University of Washington18. University of Florida19. University of New Mexico20. Louisiana State University

What a ridiculous list. NYU over Yale, I could see. Chicago, Duke, Penn, Stanford unranked, I can deal with. But Columbia over NYU?!!? Blasphemy!

Wait a minute ... Cooley doesn't make their own top 20? That's embarrassing. I'd like to think that if I were designing a rankings system to make myself look better, I would at least show up somewhere near the top. (Also, I love that Yale isn't in the top 20. There's some truth to that....)

[sanctimony] Also, Lily, this is going to sound mean, but I don't know how to avoid saying it since we are on the topic of methods of argumentation. I think you are very smart and interesting, but you will probably find in the next few years that your tendency toward ad hominems and your generally captious manner will not serve you well, whether in meeting nice vegan boys or in getting through your 1L classes. Sometimes getting through life just takes a deep breath and a bit of humility. [/sanctimony]

Read my back posts: I only use ad homs in very specific situations (i.e., where the person has been notified multiple times of the inadequacy of that approach). The only reason why I use them at all is to make it absolutely clear that yes, I do have a backbones, and yes, I will stand up for myself.

After all, in the real world, you don't get very far if you don't.

1. I think you're right that it's important to stand up for yourself, and I'm glad that you do. But the one calling names usually ends up looking as if she can't win the argument any other way. You are blessed with wits enough to focus on the arguments at hand; don't be afraid of relying on them. (You'll find that I also stand up for myself, yet I very seldom call people names or insult their intelligence. And I'm not even a particularly sharp tack!)

2. Well, I can't be bothered to check out all 5K this afternoon, but I do read your posts. From what I read in people's silly responses, I think that I am one of the few who spends the time to read them carefully. This is what has me concerned. I think you are getting deeper and deeper into a defensive rut. I've seen you jump on people in really harsh ways, apparently unprovoked, at least within the thread. (My ability to have an intertextual approach to this question is limited by my interest in only a handful of threads, so I could be wrong.) In any case, I preferred the confident poster I remember from a few months ago. Not that my preference should mean a lot to you, but I have always been more on your side than against you.

3. Your response here does not contain any ad homs, but it is still needlessly arrogant, and it turns me off. Do you really "notif[y people] multiple times of the inadequacy of [their] approach[es]"? Come on! If your arguments were that good, and if their approaches were really so inadequate, then why didn't you make that point well once or twice and move on? It's true, some people will never learn. By shouting at them that they are ignorant and bigoted, you just look less open-minded and sympathetic.

Finally, I should add that I understand that my public discussion of your posting style puts you in an awkward position, and I am sorry about that. If you'd prefer me to delete out these posts, just let me know, and I'll be happy to do so. Meanwhile, please know that I am only trying to pass along this advice because I like you and I don't want you to be further marginalized by something as silly as a few rude words stuck in otherwise estimable arguments.

I'm also going to think that people who want class-based AA to ENTIRELY replace race-based AA are correct. Thank you for showing me the error of my ways.

I don't get why Petitschoque's impolitic approach to this thread or her refusal to indulge your (sarcastic) question about her family's financial history should have any bearing on your feelings about race-based affirmative action.

Actually, it's not sarcastic. I was trying to get to a somewhat legitimate point about how AA's problems with appropriating others' problems to gain an edge in admissions can start at the individual psychological level.

Okay, I don't really know what this means, but I do know that the question you asked was about whether she worked 40 hours a week as a 12-year-old, right? What on earth does that have to do with "appropriating others' problems" or with affirmative action in general?

Let me try to put it another way. A legitimate concern with AA is that it's not helping those who really need to be helped. A lot of anti-AA individuals criticize the specific blacks and latinos who take advantage of it for simply being selfish, and I'm not sure that's quite true in the individual's psyche.

I think we're talking about a lot of separate things, and I'd like to untangle them:

1. I still think your question was very strange, and I understand why it prompted such a bitter response from Petitschoque. If your concern is that the daughter of professionals is improperly appropriating the economic disadvantage of the majority of people who share her skin color, why not just ask about that? I also don't know why people think it's okay to always ask the black girl about her family's economic background or how much she suffered as if economic disadvantage were the only rationale for her admission to law school. And I'll add that Petit is obviously smart, though she surely has a hard road ahead of her if she takes nasty attitude with her through life. No amount of disadvantage could excuse that.

2. I think, given the extreme underrepresentation of African Americans and Latinos (especially men) in the law, race-based affirmative action is helps people who need to be helped, regardless of the specific backgrounds of individual applicants. Without AA, there would be so few URM law students at top schools. Do you remember what happened at Boalt the year after Prop 209 and the UC regents' decision to end AA? There was ONE African American 1L in the 250+ person class. I don't care if the African American people who end up in that class are the lovechildren of Oprah and Robert L. Johnson, if they weren't going to get there without AA, the school needed AA and they needed the help.

3. I also think schools need a much greater emphasis on socioeconomic AA, as well as programs to make school more affordable for students with poor and working class backgrounds. Such a program and race-based AA are not mutually exclusive or even contradictory. I think you would see a still-increased number of URM students if schools made class a larger consideration in admissions and if they focused on affordability as part of their recruitment and retention efforts. I'd love to see this happen.

4. I don't think people "take advantage" of affirmative action any more than older applicants "take advantage" of their work experience or people with 4.0s "take advantage" of their GPAs. (I, for one, join a lot of others around here in thinking that the LSAT is a pretty lame method of evaluation. Should I not include my score on my application?) All applicants merely try to put forth the best applications they can. And I suppose people could try to whitewash their applications if they thought they didn't deserve AA consideration for some reason, but given the important role that race plays in American life, does that really make sense? People's experiences -- from UG institution to jobs held to extracurricular activities to religion -- are shaped so much by race. I think all of this is relevant to the admissions process.

5. Do I understand correctly that you see middle- and upper-class URM applicants as pathologically misrecognizing their overwhelming advantages in life? And you hope to convince them of how selfish and privileged they are in comparison to poor and working-class URM applicants? I don't understand the point of this, really. I also don't think it's going to work if your tactic is to ask absurd questions about their backgrounds. Maybe try it on WASP male legacies first, and then trickle down through the demographics. Seriously, I understand -- but do not agree with -- the argument that AA is giving a leg up to only the privileged minority applicants who would probably competitive without it, but I don't think this is the best way to get at that discussion.

First, black people of all class backgrounds face racism. (But you know that, right? Because I'm just not interested in having that argument.)

I'm not doubting that. However, I'm not sure AA is exclusively about racism. If it were, Asians would still be entitled to it.

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Second, she said her family was not always rich. Do all people who aren't rich make their children work 40 hours a week, in contravention of our labor laws and human rights obligations? She doesn't need to have worked 40 hours a week to have experienced poverty or working poverty or lower-middle-classdom or middle-classdom or whatever, right? Your question seems bizarre to me.

I think you're misunderstanding my point: I'm not saying that she wouldn't have felt the impact of being poor. My point is about how her word choice reflects perceptions.

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Also, we all know that the accepted rationale for affirmative action in law school admissions is the diversity of the profession and not remedying disadvantage. So really, why does this matter at all?

Who's defining "accepted rationale"? I don't follow AA debates in the media as closely as I do other issues, but I've frequently seen it justified by AA supporters as being necessary to remedying disadvantage. I've also frequently seen the idea that it's necessary to produce lawyers who are sensitive to people coming from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Sorry for the extremely long post above. Much more briefly:

No, racism is not the exclusive basis for affirmative action. But to the extent that it affects people's educational opportunities, I think it is a reasonable basis for affirmative action. That's all I meant.

By "accepted rationale," I meant the one accepted by the Supreme Court in Grutter. That decision allowed race-based affirmative action in public law school admissions in order to ensure the diversity of the profession. It did not allow schools to use lower scores as a remedy for past disadvantage (or at least it did not allow them to consider race itself as an index of past disadvantage).

I think present-day disadvantage, past disadvantage, and the diversity of the profession should be considerations in admission, FWIW.

Ah, hell. I was going to break out the Cooley rankings to show how Harvard and NYU were 1,2 respectively.

But then I saw the new Cooley rankings.

1. Boalt2. Columbia3. U of Minnesota4. Harvard5. NYU6. University of Iowa7. University of Texas8. Ohio State University9. University of Michigan10. Southern University11. University of California Hastings12. Georgetown University13. Northwestern University14. Yale University15. University of Illinois16. University of Virginia17. University of Washington18. University of Florida19. University of New Mexico20. Louisiana State University

What a ridiculous list. NYU over Yale, I could see. Chicago, Duke, Penn, Stanford unranked, I can deal with. But Columbia over NYU?!!? Blasphemy!

Wait a minute ... Cooley doesn't make their own top 20? That's embarrassing. I'd like to think that if I were designing a rankings system to make myself look better, I would at least show up somewhere near the top. (Also, I love that Yale isn't in the top 20. There's some truth to that....)

Yeah, that was insane. This game was pretty crazy too, they were playing in their own zone for almost the entire game, and Toskala still managed to take it to 3OT, and they would have won if Ehkman could pay hockey.

It wasn't Ekhman's fault. He's just the guy who ended up looking bad because his defense partner abandoned him to play two men. In that situation, you're up *&^% creek without a paddle. Ekhman and Hannan were your two best defensemen in that game.

Now, if you're looking for a bad defender, just look at Jaroslav Spacek. Holy *&^%, I've never seen anyone @#!* up so often in the playoffs. He's cost us (directly) at least three goals, including the first goal last night, and because of his terrible positioning has indirectly led to two or three more, as well. His +/- would be much worse if he wasn't paired with Pronger and Pisani's scoring line so often.

Thank god for Pronger. Edmonton owe him so far these playoffs. He's playing like three men on the ice. Between him and Roloson, we've managed to survive.

I'm also going to think that people who want class-based AA to ENTIRELY replace race-based AA are correct. Thank you for showing me the error of my ways.

I don't get why Petitschoque's impolitic approach to this thread or her refusal to indulge your (sarcastic) question about her family's financial history should have any bearing on your feelings about race-based affirmative action.

Actually, it's not sarcastic. I was trying to get to a somewhat legitimate point about how AA's problems with appropriating others' problems to gain an edge in admissions can start at the individual psychological level.

Okay, I don't really know what this means, but I do know that the question you asked was about whether she worked 40 hours a week as a 12-year-old, right? What on earth does that have to do with "appropriating others' problems" or with affirmative action in general?

Let me try to put it another way. A legitimate concern with AA is that it's not helping those who really need to be helped. A lot of anti-AA individuals criticize the specific blacks and latinos who take advantage of it for simply being selfish, and I'm not sure that's quite true in the individual's psyche.

I think we're talking about a lot of separate things, and I'd like to untangle them:

1. I still think your question was very strange, and I understand why it prompted such a bitter response from Petitschoque. If your concern is that the daughter of professionals is improperly appropriating the economic disadvantage of the majority of people who share her skin color, why not just ask about that?

I thought that's what I was asking. I apologize if it didn't sound that way; for what it's worth, I spend a lot more time thinking about my concepts than I do about the specific word choice that I finally post.

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I also don't know why people think it's okay to always ask the black girl about her family's economic background or how much she suffered as if economic disadvantage were the only rationale for her admission to law school.

I didn't mean to insinuate that it's the only reason why she got in, but if someone uses their background in an argument, I'll ask about it to see whether their argument is legitimate.

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And I'll add that Petit is obviously smart, though she surely has a hard road ahead of her if she takes nasty attitude with her through life. No amount of disadvantage could excuse that.

2. I think, given the extreme underrepresentation of African Americans and Latinos (especially men) in the law, race-based affirmative action is helps people who need to be helped, regardless of the specific backgrounds of individual applicants.

This is the part I wonder about. I've noticed that undergrad and law schools tend to be very intellectually lazy in the admissions process, at least compared to the graduate admissions programs I'm familiar with. Even though what I'm about to say is anecdotal, I've seen that laziness reflected in the makeup of the student bodies. In all my time in and around Penn and Princeton, I only met two minority from a truly poor background, and they both attended good private schools thanks to parental tuition benefits. While the minorities were less affluent than whites, I couldn't find anyone from Strawberry Mansion.

Now, I know it makes sense to hide your background at these schools, but I'm good at spotting the little things. (Sadly, not House or Veronica Mars level, but "you speak in the passive voice a lot; are you from Kiev?" good.)

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Without AA, there would be so few URM law students at top schools. Do you remember what happened at Boalt the year after Prop 209 and the UC regents' decision to end AA? There was ONE African American 1L in the 250+ person class. I don't care if the African American people who end up in that class are the lovechildren of Oprah and Robert L. Johnson, if they weren't going to get there without AA, the school needed AA and they needed the help.

3. I also think schools need a much greater emphasis on socioeconomic AA, as well as programs to make school more affordable for students with poor and working class backgrounds. Such a program and race-based AA are not mutually exclusive or even contradictory. I think you would see a still-increased number of URM students if schools made class a larger consideration in admissions and if they focused on affordability as part of their recruitment and retention efforts. I'd love to see this happen.

4. I don't think people "take advantage" of affirmative action any more than older applicants "take advantage" of their work experience or people with 4.0s "take advantage" of their GPAs. (I, for one, join a lot of others around here in thinking that the LSAT is a pretty lame method of evaluation. Should I not include my score on my application?)

LSATs aren't optional -- racial notification is.

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All applicants merely try to put forth the best applications they can.

My issues with Petitiscoque aside, my issue is more with the system's poorly thought-out implementation than with individuals' natural selfishness.

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And I suppose people could try to whitewash their applications if they thought they didn't deserve AA consideration for some reason, but given the important role that race plays in American life, does that really make sense? People's experiences -- from UG institution to jobs held to extracurricular activities to religion -- are shaped so much by race. I think all of this is relevant to the admissions process.

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5. Do I understand correctly that you see middle- and upper-class URM applicants as pathologically misrecognizing their overwhelming advantages in life? And you hope to convince them of how selfish and privileged they are in comparison to poor and working-class URM applicants? I don't understand the point of this, really.

Not pathologically, but to some degree, yes.

The problem is that the relationship to racism and classism is very closely intertwined but still separate, in much the same way that genetics and environmental influences on cancer are closely intertwined but still separate. At an emotional level, it's very hard for an individual to parse out which is which -- you just tend to blame the most visible characteristic for all of the behavior.

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I also don't think it's going to work if your tactic is to ask absurd questions about their backgrounds. Maybe try it on WASP male legacies first, and then trickle down through the demographics. Seriously, I understand -- but do not agree with -- the argument that AA is giving a leg up to only the privileged minority applicants who would probably competitive without it, but I don't think this is the best way to get at that discussion.

I'm just trying to learn from other people's styles on the board. I'll keep the fact that this execution didn't go over so well in mind in the future.